Vision Ltd: Turnbull yes to mess for 50 years

Here are some things you should know about what the Howard
Government's Malcolm Turnbull has just done. It is all there, on
Turnbull's website. You just have to look. The first thing to
understand is that Turnbull has done Gunns Ltd a hugely good
turn.

Gunns is the company that dominates Tasmania's forestry
industry. Tasmania is the only Australian state that still
clear-fells its native forests, turns its eucalypts into chips and
incinerates the rest. Two days ago Turnbull, as John Howard's
political surrogate, signed a piece of paper. It was headed:

Commonwealth of Australia.Decision to Approve the
Taking of an Action.

It reads: "Pursuant to section 133 of the Environment Protection
and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, I, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull,
Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, approve the
taking of the following action:

Note the binding date of the length of the approval. Fifty
years. Gunns Ltd now has watertight legal standing from the
Australian people, courtesy of a government and a prime minister so
thoroughly on the nose with voters they're headed for imminent
electoral defeat, to go on destroying, for the next half century,
what remains of Tasmania's magnificent old-growth forests for
woodchipping fodder for a $2 billion pulp paper mill in the Tamar
Valley, south of Launceston.

You think the language too emotive?

Here is what the author Richard Flanagan had to say about Gunns
and its pulp mill proposal five months ago in the magazine The
Monthly:

"In 1989, the then chairman of Gunns, Eddie Rouse, became
concerned that the election [that year] of a Labor/Green
government, with a one-seat majority, might affect his logging
profits. Rouse attempted to bribe a Labor MP, Jim Cox, to cross the
floor, thereby bringing down the government and clearing the way
for the pro-logging former premier, Robin Gray, and the Liberal
Party to resume power.

"Cox went to the police. The plot was exposed. A royal
commission and Rouse's fall from grace ensued. But Gunns continued.
Today it is a corporation worth more than a billion dollars, the
largest company in Tasmania, with an effective monopoly on the
island's hardwood logging and a darling of the Australian
stockmarket."

And Flanagan wrote this of Gunns's political influence: "I
witnessed a senior [Tasmanian] ALP politician make it clear the
local communications consultant Gerard Castles was no longer
welcome in the state after he wrote a newspaper article questioning
the [State Government's] policy on old-growth logging. 'The f---ing
little c--- is finished', the politician said in front of me and my
12-year-old daughter. 'He will never work here again'."

It was Flanagan's article in the May issue of The Monthly
that convinced Cousins to turn up the heat on the pulp mill
proposal and on Turnbull, his local MP. And he did so,
spectacularly. Six weeks ago, after Turnbull announced his approval
of the mill, Cousins told ABC Television's Lateline: "I
regard the environment as much more important, quite frankly, than
the result of the election.

"Because if that mill does pollute the environment, it'll be
decades if not hundreds of years before anyone can correct it. And
for Malcolm to say, 'Well, if it pollutes, we'll close the mill
down', which is what he said, I mean, that is ludicrous. You tell
me anywhere in the world where a multi-billion dollar project has
been closed down by a government. It doesn't happen. What you've
got to do is make sure all the environmental standards have
been met before it's approved, not some time after."

Lateline's Tony Jones: "Let me put to you what Richard
Flanagan had to say about the influence of Gunns on ordinary
Tasmanians. 'The woodchipper's greed not only destroys their
natural heritage, but distorts their Parliament, deforms their
policy and poisons their society.' Do you buy that far into his
argument?"

Cousins: "Well, look, Richard has a much greater knowledge of
these things than I do. I finished reading that article and found
it so compelling that I contacted the magazine and said, 'How do I
get in touch with this bloke?' I didn't know him, I knew his
novels. And I spoke to him and said, 'I've got to do something.' I
mean, I'm not somebody who runs around protesting in the streets
normally, but it was such a compelling piece of writing that I
said, 'I don't know how I can help, but whatever I can do, I want
to try.' "

On Thursday night, after Turnbull announced his decision,
Cousins went back on Lateline still adamant the issue was
far from over. This time he told Jones: "I want to see that every
single issue related to that mill is tested in the public arena
before it's built, if it's ever going to be built. And that has not
happened. The [Commonwealth's] chief scientist has only looked at
marine environment and migratory species.

"He hasn't looked at air quality, he hasn't looked at the impact
on forests, he hasn't looked at the impact on local businesses.
None of those things that would have been looked at in the public
inquiry process [before the Lennon Labor State Government closed it
down] have been looked at.

"So when Malcolm Turnbull hides behind the chief scientist's
coat-tails and says, 'This pulp mill meets world best practice',
there's a caveat there. And that is, 'in the areas we have looked
at'. "

Cousins: "Absolute nonsense. He has the power under the act
actually to look at anything he wants, even though he says he
doesn't. Bob Hawke, when the Franklin Dam issue was on [in 1983],
stood up and used whatever powers he had available and marked
himself as a true leader. Malcolm Turnbull could have done that but
he ducked for cover

"We will certainly keep pressuring the issue. But look, Malcolm
Turnbull is clearly now a lost cause on this. Whether he's going to
be a lost cause in his own seat is not something I particularly
care about. We've got to find other ways to now attack the issue to
make sure all these other matters I've referred to [are dealt
with]. We'll keep doing that, believe me."

Like the Greens' Bob Brown, the often ridiculed conscience of
the Australian Parliament, Cousins is scathing of federal Labor's
support for Turnbull's decision. Cousins said of Peter Garrett in
August: "I mean, Peter Garrett, he used to be a significant voice
in environmental matters. He gets into Parliament, based on that,
and never speaks. He has completely been neutered. Tied up, put in
a box by the Labor Party, and told to shut up."

Two nights ago Cousins told Lateline: "The shadow
minister who doesn't cast a shadow came out into the sunshine today
but still nothing shone on the ground. All he did was walk out and
say, 'I agree, Malcolm'. So you have both major parties a lost
cause, if you will."

What Garrett actually did on Thursday was sound very rehearsed
when he told reporters, mechanically: "We've always said that a
world's best practice pulp mill in northern Tasmania that provided
value-adding to the forest estate is something we would support. On
that basis, we will support [Turnbull's] decision."

Q: "You don't look very comfortable."

Garrett: "I am perfectly comfortable today, knowing that it is
minister Turnbull's decision - a decision that's been a long time
coming He made a terrible fist of it until today. The
[Commonwealth's] chief scientist has now provided him with a set of
conditions which mean the mill can go ahead. We certainly support
that decision."

Someone else who might have looked just as unconvincing was the
Government's Bill Heffernan, the farmer senator from Junee who was
very public in voicing his opposition back in August to the pulp
mill being sited in the Tamar Valley. "You don't have to be a
genius to work out that Hampshire [on Tasmania's west coast] is a
much better site environmentally, Heffernan told reporters.

"The idea of value adding to a raw export is sensible, but you
can't dodge the fact we don't want to look back in 100 years and
think, 'Who was the stupid bastard that did that'."

None of us will be alive to know.

But a fortnight ago, before the Parliament adjourned, Heffernan
went into a closed meeting of Liberal Party senators where he was
scathing of the "f---ing gutlessness" on both sides of the
Parliament for bending to what he called the "political blackmail"
exerted by Gunns and the Tasmanian State Labor Government. This
week Heffernan was back on his farm, saying nothing. Malcolm
Turnbull should be thankful.

Smooth operator plays footsy with Madonna

Was that Peter Costello actually flirting on air two days ago?
Yes, it was. Even at 50, and obviously feeling his oats now that
John Howard is feeling his age, Costello was doing a nice line with
the ABC's Madonna King on Brisbane morning radio. Really. After
some election patter on the economy, education, wages, water, etc,
the interview concluded on a more personal note.

King: Look, one last thing. People know you as Treasurer. What
is something about you that we don't know, that you could tell me
this morning?

Costello: That I'm a lot of fun.

King, unbelieving: I'm not sure that always comes across.

Costello: A lot of fun and good company, Madonna. And if we have
the chance for a cup of tea and a piece of cake, you would see
that.

King: I think I'm a white wine type of girl, really.

Costello: We could easily extend to that.

It must be the joy of spring.

The mood did not reach out and embrace our creaking Prime
Minister, who 24 hours earlier also had been a guest on King's
program. The chat then had been nowhere near as titillating.

King: Just before you go, what date is this election being
held?

Howard: Some day between now and early December.

King: Have you a date in mind?

Howard: Oh look, Madonna, let's not bore listeners with this
game.

King: They're not bored with it.

Howard: No, I think they're bored with the press's attempts to
get me to name the date during interviews, because they know darn
well that's not going to happen. Look, we are still governing, we
are doing things. I mean, what I'm announcing today is of far more
interest to Australian parents [his $190 million pledge for
autistic children] than the date of the election. And what I'm
announcing today is part of government. If we were not governing,
if we were spending every day just attacking the Labor Party and
not making any announcements, not doing our job as the elected
Government, then you would have a right to say to me, 'Stop mucking
around, Mr Howard, and name the date.' But while this Government
has things to do, issues to deal with, policies to announce, it
will go on doing so.

Of course, Prime Minister.

No time for frippery.

"Things to do", indeed. Like win an election.

The Buttons were interested only in winning a football match.
John, the father, is the former Hawke/Keating government minister
widely acknowledged as our best industry minister ever. James, the
son, is London correspondent for the Herald and its sister
Fairfax paper in Melbourne, The Age. The Buttons are AFL
tragics, lifetime followers of Geelong.

James came from London for last weekend's grand final. On the
Saturday morning he stood on the stairs in his father's Richmond
terrace and quoted to the gathered family Henry V's Crispian
Day speech ("we happy few, we band of brothers") which he'd adapted
to fit Geelong's coming glorious battle that day. And The
Age the previous day had published, on its opinion page, John
Button's wonderful preview piece on his 44-year wait for Geelong to
win another grand final.

In it, Button told how he'd missed seeing that last great
victory, "of sacred memory", in 1963, but had "seen" Geelong's
previous win, against Collingwood, in the 1952 grand final. Button
had had a standing-room ticket only, and "I found myself, a short
person, behind a crowd of the largest" supporters Collingwood had
ever produced.

"I saw the backs of heads, glasses of beer ferried from the back
row to the front, and once or twice the football when it was kicked
high in the air. But I was there, and because the Collingwood
supporters were good communicators I had an idea what was going
on," Button wrote. "For a while there were roars of approval and
then, as Geelong apparently took control, prayful incantations to
some mystical Collingwood deity called 'Fockinel'. 'Fockinel,' they
shouted. 'What's going on? Fockinel."'

John Howard would well understand such incantations, every time
an opinion poll appears these days. Fockinel!